The following are sixteen advanced tips to help complete the campaign more quickly
and easily.
1. Use Random Survivor Rolls For Rare Skills: At the start of a new game, if you skip the tutorial, you can re-roll a set of three survivors. Always try to get three survivors with special rare skills —- Computers, Chemistry, Gardening, and especially Medicine. Standard skills do not matter, as you will be able to naturally level those up.
2. Fire-Crackers Are The Best Item: Decoys (fire-crackers in particular) are the best item in the game. Always bring a few fire-crackers with you on all outings. They are easy and cheap to create (10 parts at the workshop), and they will help you escape any deadly situation. If you are outnumbered by zombies and need to make a quick escape, throw fire-crackers and run to your car.
3. Only Answer Help Calls From Current Enclaves: Once you establish a base, you will regularly get calls for help. It can be difficult to tell who you should be helping. If you have allied (or even neutral) enclaves on your map, only answer those calls. You can safely ignore the calls from random strangers, as it does not matter if you skip them. If you skip local enclave calls, they will become cold and eventually hostile towards you.
4. Random Enclave Calls And Stranger Jobs Give Rucksacks: If you complete side missions for enclaves, or rescue survivors then refuse to let them join your community, they will usually drop a resource rucksack on the ground after they stop following you. They do not say anything about giving it to you -- it will just appear on the ground. Make sure not to miss it.
5. Ally With Enclaves For Bonus Status Effects, Survivors, And Faster Influence: It is very beneficial to become friends with every local enclave. Once you become allies, you will unlock bonus special status effects, such as extra storage and unique radio commands. You can also earn more influence through trade, or even obtain useful survivors. Talk to allied enclaves to recruit any of their members —- it will cause the enclave to disappear, but it is worth it if they have skills you need.
6. Do Not Worry About Clearing Out Infestations: Your community will constantly complain about the level of infestation on the map. It really is not worth the effort to clear out infestations. You will only earn a small amount of respect and influence, and morale will improve —- but the morale effects can easily be countered. Focus on collecting resources and helping allies. If you have nothing else to do, you can then consider clearing out some infestations.
7. Go To Every Survey Site, Then Use The Radio To Locate All Plague Hearts: To quickly complete the Plague Hearts goal, you need to locate all the Plague Hearts. Usually, there are about 12 Plague Hearts on every map. Slowly move from your starting point and stop at all survey towers to scout the environment. Usually you will locate hearts, but eventually you may have a hard time finding the final one or two hearts. When that happens, use the radio and request a Plague Heart location.
8. Build Six Pipe/Soda Can Bombs To Quickly Destroy Plague Hearts: Plague Hearts are your main goal for most of the game. To destroy them safely while solo (even with the weakest survivor), you just need a lot of explosives and a decoy or two. It helps to bring as many decoys and explosives as you possible (a gun is also helpful). Simply put down a decoy outside the Plague Heart, then run inside and hit the heart with all the bombs you can.
9. Save Your Influence For The Best Base —- Only Move Once: Influence is extremely valuable -- so do not waste it on unnecessary things. There are six bases on every map —- your goal is to earn either 1,500 or 3,500 influence so you can purchase the large base (low customization) or the huge base (high customization) for your community. Before selecting a new base, search the map and unlock all of them. You can get an overview of a base's facilities from the map menu.
10. Break Down Resources For Instant And Better Rewards: If you are full on storage and have too many resources, break them down for bonus rewards that are even better than if you take them back to base and deposit them. For example, you will spend one gas resource to get a gas can, but if you break down a gas rucksack outside your base, you will get one gas can and two Molotov cocktails.
11. Raid Evacuation Sites, Military Comms, And Police Stations For The Best Weapons: Military areas and government buildings are where you can find the best weapons. Guns stores are good for ammo resources, pistols, and rifles, but go to Evacuation Sites, Military Comms Stations, and Military Checkpoints for assault rifles, grenade launchers, and high-tech mods. You can get shotguns from Police Stations. Shotguns are one of the best weapons for killing freaks.
12. Craft Silencers For Bolt-Action Rifles and Revolvers: Silencers are a great addition to almost any weapon, but they are best equipped to bolt-action rifles, or revolvers if you have enough ammo. Silencers make your shots much quieter, but also cause your weapon to break down and lose durability quicker. Revolvers and bolt-action rifles never lose durability -- so you never have to worry about wasting parts to repair them. Silencers also never break -- so you can use them as much as desired. Upgraded workshops also provide better silencers.
13. Use Mods To Unlock The Best Facilities/Abilities: Mods allow you to not have to provide power to your entire base or unlock water if you have Portable Power Generators or Water Coolers. Search for facility mods whenever you go on resource raids, and bring them back if you find them. They are very valuable -— install a mod and check to see if they require anything else. Water Coolers and Portable Generators need to be filled daily. A good generator only needs one gas per day. The best mod is the High-Powered Antennae. When this mod is installed at a Command Center, it gives you access to another outpost. Look for it in military areas or government buildings.
14. Use Guns Against Freaks: Normally, you never want to fight a Freak within melee range. Bloaters need to be shot in the head (or stomach), and Screamers also need a head shot to take down before they yell. Run Ferals down with your vehicle, or use a shotgun to quickly kill them. Juggernauts are the most difficult, but any weapon can work on them. Hide in a house and headshot them until they are dead. It usually takes about 15-20 bullets, depending on the power of your weapon.
15. Use Guns Against Humans: Eventually, you will fight human enemies in the game. Use guns against them. Humans are pretty resilient, unless you get a headshot, which is an instant kill. Flashbangs and fire-crackers are also very helpful against humans. When fighting humans, drop fire-crackers near them and zombies will swarm toward them. Usually you will be outnumbered -- so the undead will be drawn to your enemy's gun shots. Aim carefully and wait in chokepoints, then headshot the incoming humans before they can shoot you. Their guns can kill your survivors extremely quickly -- so make sure to play it safe.
16. Complete Legacy Goals To Unlock New Game+ Bonuses: There are four legacy goals you can complete to win a game in State Of Decay 2: Sheriff, Builder, Trader, and Warlord. For each legacy goal completed, you can select a card at the start of a New Game+ to get a special bonus. You can select up to two cards -- so it is worth completing the story many times so you get great bonus rewards at the start of New Game+. For example, completing the Sheriff goal will get you a bunch of rare loot daily.
Beginner tips
The following are ten tips to help when starting the game.
1. Choose Your Home Base Wisely: Your Home Base is your central hub. It is where you do all your construction, and where survivors from your community gather. While the first Home Base is normally chosen for you, in the form of a story objective, you are free to choose one after that. You can only have one Home Base at a time, and when you choose a second, your previous is destroyed. Each Home Base offers different slots for construction -- so make sure the spots offer what you need. Each map features a "master" base, which is the best of all the bases. You can easily spot these, as they cost 3,500 Influence Points each.
2. Resources: Resources are important to your success. There are consumables and items that you can find and use yourself, but there are also community resources. These resources are special, as they always come in the shape of a large sack that you carry on your back. You can only carry a single sack at a time, but you can also load up your trunk. When you return these sacks to your Home Base, the resources go towards your community. Having enough food, medical supplies, and crafting materials ensures your community is safe and maintains a high level of morale.
3. Vehicles Are Valuable: Vehicles are a very valuable resource. They allow you to safely travel long distances, avoid dangerous zombie types, and you can fill up your trunk with lots of supplies during each run. Do not waste your repair kits and fuel early in the game, especially on vehicles that do not offer much utility. Find the vehicles that have the most capacity and use those for the start of your journey, ensuring you always return to Home Base with more resources than your last expedition cost.
4. Beware Of Traveling To New Maps: While State Of Decay 2 features three playable maps at launch, they are not really connected. The map you start on is the only map you can explore for that community. If you leave the map through one of the roads that leads to another area, it will completely wipe your progress in your current map, and you will start again in a new area.
5. Create A Custom Community: When you first start the game, you are given the choice of a few starting communities. Any of these can work depending on your playstyle and approach, but there is a little trick if you want more control. Complete the tutorial with any of the pre-made communities -- the tutorial is complete once you have occupied your first Home Base. Then, exit to the main menu, and go to "Manage Communities". Choose a new community to have several additional options appear; choose to skip the tutorial. This allows you to continuously randomize three different survivors to start your community, including unique and exciting skills.
6. Pay Attention To Skills: All survivors have basic skills: Fighting, Cardio, Shooting, etc. However, there is also a slot for a final skill. These are unique skills that can greatly help your communities efforts. Some boost experience points rates by up to 100%. Others unlock powerful new moves in combat, and some allow you to build special facilities at your Home Base.
7. Switch Survivors Often: Your survivors can become exhausted or injured during their expeditions. This drastically reduces their overall performance and greatly increases their chances of a serious accident. You can use many items to refill stamina, but the best way to ensure your survivors are in great shape is to switch them out often. Visit your beds in your Home Base to switch to other members of your community.
8. Choose Your Leader Wisely: As your community members earn standing points, they can rank up from Civilian to Hero. Once they reach the Hero rank, you can assign them as a leader, but choose carefully. There are four types of leaders in the game, and each of the four types will take you on a different set of story objectives. Once you have chosen a leader, you can only replace them by exiling them from your community. Before choosing, make sure your leader is someone you are sure you want to keep with you for the rest of the game.
9. Do Not Waste Your Outposts: In addition to your Home Base, you can occupy Outposts. While the slots are limited, you can occupy up to six different Outposts alongside your Home Base. Some of the benefits are basic, such as additional beds, while others can offer valuable items and assets, such as free coffee (great for stamina) or electric and water supply. Pay close attention to the resources your community runs out of the most. Try to compensate by finding Outposts that provide that asset. They are automatically delivered to your Home Base every day -- so minimal maintenance is required.
10. Beware Of Plague Zombies: You can tell Plague Zombies apart from traditional zombies, as they are usually dark red. In addition to the typical health damage they inflict when they strike you, they also cause Blood Plague damage. When you accumulate enough Blood Plague damage, you become infected and will die from it if you do not quickly cure it.
Completing all four legacy goals
This method allows you to complete all four legacy goals in a single community, instead of restarting your community after finishing each individual playthrough. While it still takes time to get all four leader types and complete their end-game missions, you will not have to destroy all 10 Plague Hearts or rebuild a community each time. Complete the following steps:
Destroy all ten Plague Hearts, and begin the legacy goal missions. Once you reach the final stage, a message will appear stating you will permanently end the community when you complete the mission.
Select "Not Yet", then exit to the main menu to force an autosave. Note: Cloud saving is required for this trick to work.
Return to the community, and select "Yes" to begin the legacy goal mission.
Complete the mission, then wait for the legacy goal achievement to unlock. Once it does, immediately press [Home] and scroll down until you highlight State Of Decay 2 under the left side menu. Press [Options] and select the "Manage game & add-ons" option.
Scroll down to the "Saved data" option and select your gamertag. Choose "Delete saved data" and select "Delete from console" to delete the local save data. Note: Sometimes this will have to be done twice, as it does not always do it correctly the first time. You will know it has worked correctly when your gamertag does not appear any longer under "Saved data" for the game.
This will close the game. Start the game again, and the cloud data should sync with the game. You will then be able to continue your community with the legacy goal you just finished still complete.
You can now kill the current leader in your community and elect a new leader with a different legacy goal. Complete the second legacy goal, then repeat the same save file deletion trick, and move on to the third and then fourth legacy goals.
By following these steps, you can complete all four goals without replaying from the very beginning each time. There is still a lot of effort required, but this process makes it much easier to get all four endings and multiple achievements. It takes approximately 2-3 hours to complete each legacy goal instead of the 8-15 hours it normally would take.
Deal with Infection
The worst part of the zombie apocalypse is getting infected. Yes, you can become a zombie — thankfully, only one type of zombie will increase your infection meter. The red-eyed zombies are faster, stronger, and deadlier than standard zombies - and the red-eyed zombies also carry the blood plague.
When they attack you, your infection meter will increase. Fill the meter up, and a timer will appear — if you don't get a cure before the timer runs out, you'll become a zombie. That's an instant game over.
If you don't have any Plague Samples, place a survivor in the Infirmary for treatment. You won't be able to play as them, and they'll use multiple medical supplies a day, but it will completely stop the rise of the infection.
To successfully fight the infection, you'll need to construct the Infirmary at your HQ. There are two ways that you can b fight the infection.
Blood Plague Therapy Therapy will lower your infection meter to zero when used. This requires 3 Plague Samples.
Blood Plague Cure The Cure will save you if you've been infected with the Blood Plague. Only use this if you've been infected and the timer to zombification has appear. This requires Infirmary 2, and 5 Plague Samples.
To get Blood Plague Samples, you'll need to hunt red-eyed zombies found scattered throughout the map - the red-eyed zombies will especially appear at night. I recommend shooting them dead from a safe vantage point. It's far, far better to simply cure the Blood Plague. Just wait until the timer begins - no need to cure it too quickly, when you're bound to just get infected again.
Infinite influence
Go to an allied enclave and trade. Bring a stack of any bullets. Sell the bullets individually to the enclave. After selling the bullets, repurchase the stack from the enclave, then sell the bullets back individually. Repeat this as many times as desired. You will earn more influence per bullet if you sell them individually than in a stack. You can infinitely purchase the stack from the allied enclave, sell them back to the enclave individually, and repurchase again for unlimited profits. You will always earn more than you are losing. However, you only get approximately 10-20 influence per transaction.
New Game Plus Mode
State of Decay 2 does have a new game plus mode in the form of future communities. Once all the Plague Hearts have been taken care of in State of Decay 2, the leader of your community will have a legacy they want to leave for future generations. To do this, you'll need to complete a number of objectives and goals, and once this is done, you'll "complete" the game and unlock a perk for future playthroughs, essentially providing a new game plus mode. What the perk is depends on who you've elected to be your leader in State of Decay 2.
What's more, all of your surviving characters are saved and can be introduced when starting over in State of Decay 2's new game plus, though if you just want to start from scratch, you can do exactly that, too.
With a number of different starting duos to choose from and a number of different locations you can start at too, there's plenty of reason to keep on scavenging and slaying in State of Decay 2 after you've helped your first leader realize their legacy.
Unlimited Influence
This glitch will help you make your influence never end. First, you need to have an upgraded Command Center 2 on your home base. Then, you need to find a trader and buy some 9mm or 22mm rounds. Sell them one piece at a time, and then buy them back again one piece at a time. Do this kind of trading while using Broadcast, which increases your influence by 10%. So for each traded round, you will earn more influence, which will result in a solid profit. You can exploit this every time and never have to worry about your influence ever again. Note: This glitch was performed on an unpatched version of the game. It is likely to eventually get patched.
Unlimited Stamina Glitch
You will have to pay attention to the blue gauge located on the bottom-left corner of your screen. That's the stamina gauge, and the red one is your health gauge. When you run or do any other physical action, the blue gauge will quickly go down. As a result, you will have to wait a bit for it to recover. But if you don't want to wait and would rather just use this infinite stamina glitch, then simply press LB and tap it. You will notice that your character will keep moving without using your stamina at all.
Advanced tips...